No matter your position on the Iraq war and the difficulties they face, there is one thing that all reasonable people can agree on - it is home to some of the most courageous people on Earth. Chief Judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman and the others who serve in the fledgling justice system are surely among them.
Reaction from Baghdad - Mohammed and Omar Fadhil (Iraq The Model);
I was overwhelmed with joy and relief as I watched the criminals being read their verdicts. For the first time in our region tyrants are being punished for their crimes through a court of law.Until this moment and while I’m typing these words I’m still receiving words of congratulations in emails, phone calls and text messages from friends inside and outside the country. These were our only means to share our happiness because of the curfew that limits our movement.
This is the day for Saddam’s lovers to weep and I expect their shock and grieve to be huge. They had always thought their master was immortal so let them live in their disappointment while we live for our future.
This is a day not only for Iraqis but a historic day for the whole region; today new basis for dealing between rulers and peoples are found.
No one is above the law anymore.
[...]
Right now volleys of bullets ring not far from where I sit, some are fired to express joy while others are fired in a desperate expression of denial but I have no doubt who is going to prevail. Although the road is long but we are walking forward and will not look back.
I salute the honorable special tribunal that challenged threats and risks and insisted on keeping up the work until the end, and today it brought back the pride of the land that wrote the world’s first laws.
I salute the witnesses who risked their lives to reveal the truth and expose the crimes of the dictator.
I salute the brave men and women of the coalition who came to this land and made this day possible.
Congratulations to all my Iraqi brothers and sisters on this glorious day.
The perspective of one Iraq veteran, Austin Bay;
PM Maliki makes the key point: “unmatched in Iraq’s history.” That can be extended a bit to read ”unmatched in Mesopotamia’s history.”[...]
But this grand story is about belated justice, a justice once thought impossible to reach by the real victims, the Iraqi people. It’s also about the slow, difficult birth of a democratic society in a region caught in the terrible yin-yang of tyrants and terrorists — a nation moving from the whim of the Big Man and the fear of terrorist bombs to the rule of law and democratic polity.
I know, the NY Times and John Kerry have told us Iraq is a disaster. No. The US has already gotten about 90 percent of what it needed on September 12, 2001. There’s a democratically elected government in the potentially most powerful (predominantly) Arab Muslim nation, a government trying to learn to crawl under the most trying conditions. It’s a government that is learning by doing — and learning often by failure. However, as long as the US and coalition remain around to coach, train, and respond to crisis, Iraqi failures will be controlled failures.
Yup. Fostering the development of choice in the Middle East — a choice other than tyranny or terror– is a tough process.
But will we get that story? I doubt it.
(Both links via Instapundit, where there's more.)
Now it is up to the nine judge appeals panel to do their thing. I certainly hope they are swift otherwise there might be a lot of judicial kinfolk who might end up being pawns in this thing.
I often wonder if the west would have the cajoules to do what the Iraqis have put up with for the taste of freedom.
Well, Texas, stop wondering. We have had fewer than 50 casualties in the pasr several years, soldiers who have signed up for service, and the rest of us, safely at home, run for cover.
They should have sentenced them all to death and taken them out and shot them. Then nothing for their terrorist supporters to try to realease. Wait for the kidnaping of westerners to start
Chief Judge Raouf Abdul-Rahman.
I certainly wouldn't want to be the underwriter of his life insurance policy.
Pissedoff is quite correct about this.
The article clarifies a lot of confusion as to whether the problems in Iraq are caused by Islamofascists or whether it is the result of sectarian violence.
It is reported that the citizens of Tikrit were "defiant in condemning" the decision and sentence.
Obviously, they weren't Islamofascists; otherwise they would have been expressing "outrage" which is a key element of the drill.
Hey Pissedoff you forgot that the bullets need to be dipped in pigsblood before shotting that ****
Its such a simple solution.
AP (Associated Press) errs, again (deliberately?)
The "ousted leader", aka depraved, evil, former Muslim dictator shouted:
allahu akbar. (Arabic).
...-
BAGHDAD (AP) - Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced Sunday to hang for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shiite town, as the ousted leader, trembling and defiant, shouted "God is great!". cnews
Vatican thinks Saddam shouldn't be hanged. Every life is sacred.
While I don't agree with their view, I do agree that a death sentence is too good for him. I'd like to see him put back into a hole like the one they found him in, feed him bacon, pipe in Bush victory speeches and some nice loud music.
Or something similar.
Sad to say, this wont be even close to over till he is cold and buried.
....I dont believe in capital punishment, in Canada, but he is not a Canadian so my opinion doesnt mean a thing. Iraqis have to determine their own justice.
I have had a terrible time trying to figure out what is actually going on over there. Ie. Location of the fighting if there is fighting or is it just random bombing?
In any case I-casualty indicates that approx. 1200 US troops have died each year. It is difficult to deal with just one death yet considering the undertaking and comparing to say Vietnam where the annual death toll was approx 5000 a year this seems to be going very well.
The administrations decision to disband the Iraq military and completely purge the government of any Baath loyalists top to bottom may seem imprudent but a clean slate for a new country over the long haul has got to be the smart way to go.
Keeping the old infastructure in place could have in the future lead to problems. With a completely new slate the Iraqi people are building their own homegrown government that will represent them.
This kind of massive undertaking in real world term s is breathtakingly huge. But the process is chugging along making progress.
If the Americans stick with it and don't succumb to the mindnumbing stupidity of the New York times then in the not to distant future it appears they will go home with a safe and democratic Muslim country successfully operating.
The price in relative terms is cheap considering the gaurgantuan benefits for all concerned.
The NYT's seems to thrive and sell papers on the world being in as much misery and confusion as they can help to sow. The Dems seem to wish for electoral victory at all costs any cost non is to great for them to regain power.
The size of the undertaking the fact that it is making remarkably fast progress with what are relatively few deaths and casualties is a testment to the choices and success the operation appears to be having.
Saddam should be whisked away to a secret secure holding place.
There can be nothing left to chance. A daring Muslim brotherhood rescue of Saddam would be far too costly to tolerate, yet his actual date of hanging should be moved forward every month or so.
This state of limbo is the best policy for the near term future at least.
The valid reasons should become clear when one thinks about it carefully.
In the mean time Maliki is friendly with Ahmandinejad and Muqtada, lifting our troop controls on their stronghold Sadr City.
Maliki may be working on zones for the four factions in Iraq for peaceful governance or he may be double-crossing us and I can*t be sure which yet.
In any case, the forces to contend with are the Iran backed Sadr City Shiia fighters and Muqtada.
You may have seen YouTube video of black garbed Muqtada forces marching five - six abreast, Nazi style, in a half mile column on a Sadr City main street.
The fix is complex. The Sunni Baath are 20% of population and still demand 50%-70% of oil revenues.
The Shiia, the majority, continue to kidnap wealthy Sunni for ransom profits.
The Kurds are fortifying their assets during this breather for them. And Turkey is banking on the Kurd buffer zone to insulate them from Iranian Shiite pressures.
Is Maliki able to bring balance to these groups in Iraq or is he two-faced exactly as Arafat was? Arafat would talk Peace in english but criminal subversion in his own languages.
Iran wants to keep things messy in Lebanon, [Hezbollah], Iraq [Muqtada al Sadr] and Afghanistan, [Taliban], now crossing more into Pakistan.
No wonder *MadMud* Ahmadinejad is laughing. All his dirty work is carried out everywhere but Iran.
How can the *clever* Western World allow themselves to look so politically correc. . . Stupid? = TG
Muqtada al - Sadr*s marching black headbanded Mufsidun are in one of these 5 YouTube videos. Everyone who sees this truth becomes a changed person.
w.w.youtube.com/watch?v=IcgQyRuZ7rs&NR
For a Conservative majority. = TG
Gotta love the guy who throws arbitrary numbers. I'm guessing here but from what Steved gotta say there are know six guys left in in Iraq so I don't know what allt the fuss is about.
But his advice is keep your head low and you may not be 1 of the 1000's Saddam killed each year. Yea that's good advice.
That's not even talking torture or maiming or some other some such thing. And God forbid you are a soccer player on a losing team. Those wacky fun guys Uday and Qusay. Or maybe Chemical Ali. Tough to keep your head low when their gassing the whole area.
Some people just don't know that to make life good has a cost. Typically a tragically high cost. Nevertheless the millions that will reap the benefits far outways the the thousands that will pay the price.
Personally I think the powers that be in Iraq will look at this and decide what will get them the most bang for their buck. Hang him and does that help unite the country or let him rot in prison under endless appeals proccess to a calm the street. Skeptical about #2. Just get the feeling ( reaching out to the lefties here. ) that they are going to hang the bastard get it over with. End the era no lingering ghost hanging around.
The good thing about prompt disposal is that he can not be sprung due to slack management or bribes.
That would give them a shot in the arm we can not afford. There may be riots in the streets if he is put out of his misery.
A Democrat who gets it. Orson Scott Card, a Democrat for many years writes:
If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will , in fact, be one.
Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.
But at least there will be a chance.
w.w.ornery.org/essays/war...06-10-29- 1.html
I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.
But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.
To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide.
This piece is a must-read. Why can't most Democrats think this clearly?
These few YouTube videos will make things crystal clear and save you reading some lengthy books.
w.w.youtube.com/watch?v=I...=IcgQyRuZ7rs&NR
It would be nice if Joe Lieberman and Scott Card were to start an awareness in the Democratic party.
Time to get serious and turn the tidal wave. = TG
Sorry, just noticed those two links were scrunched.
w.w.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-10-29-1.html
w.w.youtube.com/watch?v=IcgQyRuZ7rs&NR
Just add the *W* and these will work. = TG
Yes, courage is certainly one of perspective. One might say the black mothers in Tanzania have "courage" for getting up every day and trying to feed their starving children with whatever pittance they are able to scrape together. And yet life goes on. It is courage from our perspective, but what are Iraqis to do but go on, try and fight against extremism, and avoid becoming the latest casualty? The banality of our existence is blogging about matters we don't truly understand, while in Iraq avoiding death on a daily basis is their routine.
Heroes are often made out to be those who do extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances. In fact I would say Iraqi's are not heroes, but they are trying to do "ordinary" things in extraordinary circumstances. And that does take courage. To continue, to fight, to resist extremism against the bleak hellscape that is modern day Iraq, is almost an act of heroism unto itself.
Decades of butchery and slaughter in what was once the "Cradle of Civilization" on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is to weep.
The Iraqi people deserved better, no wonder we have to pray for our leaders.
Leave it too CBCpravda to find a disisent voice in this conflict. and of course report it.
Iraqi-Canadians struggle with Saddam verdict
ever notice the weekend CBCpravda is even a bit more left than usual.
Okay, who woke up steved?
"With Saddam at least if you kept quiet and minded your own business then chances are you would be left alone." Try telling that to the soccer team or the hundreds/thousands that ended up in mass graves for not being quiet enough.
Mister Comic Relief strikes again.
this is a mixture of the post heyday where supporters of naziism found ways to spirit the likes of mengele into south america.
and more recently italy where numerous prosecutors and judges died in car explosions before finally the cosa nostra was trampled to unconscience.
we shall see. it is a big reason for hope however.
I think Saddam's hanging is the kind of timetable we can live with.
Toppling him was a 'good' and surely more people would have died if we had kept up the sanctions. According to Christopher Hitchens' second-hand account,it helped to scare Libya straight. It kicked Syria out of Lebanon (for a time). And now it will kill this tyrant.
That said, to quote Cromwell:
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
I'd say, ensure this hanging goes forward, help control the violence right after that- and then pull out of the cities and become an airborne rapid reaction force to help out the democratic government. Leave on a victory - but leave.
Hopefully, Saddam's dead still-twitching legs will dispell any notion that America is leaving with its tail between its own.
I remember when they tried Caucescu in Romania. They found him guilty and, appeals be damned, took him and his wife directly out back of the court house and shot them dead. Sounds like the right plan for Saddam and his co-horts.
Saddam will never be hung, he will develop a strange illness in prison, aka Arafat, and we will wake up to the news he has died or committed suicide. Could be an epidemic comeing in Iraq that will cause all those sentenced with him to become ill. The powers that be could possibly send them to France for treatment, and no autopsies done. Send in CIS.
Ahhh yes,
Timing is everything! Death to tyrants!
Saddam is really a non issue unless the mid-term elections are imminent. The most famous Baathist in the world is only a side show and no more than a symbol. A mere diversion to the real issue which is civil war in Iraq.
Bush's smirk on Wednesday morning will only get smirkier every time he thinks of how he's hood-winked the American people one more time.
Don't be fooled again!
Another view - who would have thought it!
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Mohammed and Omar Fahdil say it perfectly - there is now a 'new basis for dealing between ruler and peoples; no-one is above the law'.
It's not so much about Hussein; it's about the Iraqi people themselves taking control of their nation, taking it back from the personal unaccountable agenda of dictatorship, back from the personal unaccountable agenda of terrorism - and insisting on a rule of law.
That's what is so important and momentous. I think we have to thank Bush, the US/UK/Australia and all the rest of the Coalition for freeing the Iraqi people - who could then, themselves, take charge of their own country and develop what is completely new in the region - democracy and the rule of an equal law.
As opposed to being a fool David?
jwp,
It's easy for us to sit in our comfy cozy dens waxing eloquent rhetoric when half a world away uncontrolled violence reigns supreme and "democracy and the rule of an equal law" is just another conservative fantasy.
ET, I suggest you enlist and go fight this war on the battlefield not in your biased brain.
"Don't be fooled again." - sez David Brown
Do you mean, "We won't be fooled again"?
Pete Townshend, in a recent interview in Rolling Stone said that the idiot hippies misconstrued the meaning of the song. He was actually talking about ridiculous leftist thought.
But then, I guess, that's common with your type. Always screwing things up by reversing the meaning, or having absolutely no clue at all.
Irwin,
Maybe that's why Foley and Townsend share a passion for the same thing...computers and underage boys!
You never know what you're going to find when you open up a conservative closet.
Never mind...if you have to explain art it's not worth it.
Saddam is getting what he deserves and Bush will get his in the end as well. History only has so much kindness.
Like all good lefties, David Brown has no clue.
Think of it this way Dave, the will of a nation is like a spear.
The tip represents the nations military and the shaft is the will of its people.
The tip is of little use without the force of the power of the nation behind the military.
Serving in the military is not a requirement to support the war on terror but the support of the people of Canada for the governments' and the militarys' stated objectives is.
Without it, obtaining Canadas' stated objectives of lowering the threat level from those who practice terror to obtain and /or keep political power, becomes much, much tougher.
The big question for many of us right wingnuts DB is, whose side are you on?
From my experience the left wing moonbats will always Choose To Lose.
Also the BBC or maybe Louise Arbour will start up a defense fund for Saddam any minute. /s
I think Saddam might win a retrial too since he had such a lousy lawyer, i.e. Ramsey Clark.
From what I observed Saddam was doing pretty good until that day where he stood up and proudly admitted his involvement in the revenge killings of 148 people and followed it up with the question "And so what if I did?".
Brown,
Hey, although you botched it, you're the one who quoted him.
"You never know what you're going to get when you open up a conservative closet."
Yikes! By contrast and constant example, we know what you'll get when you open up a liberal close,t and much prefer that they'd be kept closed. Better yet, go back in and lock it.
"The big question for many of us right wingnuts DB is, whose side are you on?"
The big answer is, I'm on the side of honesty and integrity as it applies to politics and the war on terror. That's why I don't take political sides...honest and integrity then become an impossibility.
Kate says, "You don't speak for me."
David Brown says, "You don't lie for me."
Irwin,
If I meant to quote Townsend I would have attributed it to him. Please revisit my previous posts to see that I consistently do so.
Please stay on topic.
RE: David Brown says I'm on the side of honesty and integrity.
David Brown also says Saddam is really a non issue.
Which one is it DB?
Regardless of what happens to Saddam, the sectarian violence in Iraq (and Afghanistan)will go on, unless and until the bands of thugs (some say militias) are disarmed, and dealt with under law. Many deserve to be in prison. Rule of law doesn't stand a snowball's chance in hell, let alone in Iraq and Afghanistan, until the bad asses are disarmed and put in prison.
And good luck with that objective, in countries where machine guns, grenade launchers, and their bad ass owners are more common than snowflakes in a Canadian blizzard.
no bozos allowed,
Saddam signed his own death warrant a long time ago, only a clown might think differently. His verdict is anti-climatic and timed perfectly for the mid-terms.
One can only hope that the undecideds see that they're again being dupped by dubbya and turn against the GOP.
Brown,
Your next post (12:47) admitted by implication that you did misquote Townshend.
Furthermore, I've never seen you on topic. Perhaps whizzing and whirling all around it, never making any sense - but never on it.
Man, you're an idiot.
Irwin,
Man are you ever trying hard to discredit me. Guilt by implication...now there's a stretch.
Maybe all that whizzing and whirling is higher logic and deeper understanding than a conservative mindset can come to grips with.
Anyways...keep trying maybe someday things will pick up for you and you'll understand that you can't tar all us liberals with the same brush. I support many right wing initiatives but regretablly decline all invitations to join the club.
"...trying hard to discredit me..." You?
Nobody needs to discredit you, David. You're doing a magnificent job all by yourself.
And please remain Liberal. Due to your irrational postings, I'm sure you're proving yourself an excellent recruiter for the Conservatives.
We interrupt the camel races to bring you this live telecast from the gallows. Here stands Saddam, a man that only a few short years ago brought fear into the hearts of his own people. And what's this? Saddam has just pissed himself, he is also crying like a little school girl. The rope is being put around his neck and Saddam is trying to say something. What's that Saddam? I can't understand you, I don't speak Arabic. The gate opens and down falls Saddam, it looks like a clean break. Thank Allah for all the good food at the palace, at a time when many of his own people were starving.
This educational video may be used in places like N. Korea and Iran in the future should the need arise.